Posts tagged with: football

According to Thomas McCraw, who is the author of American Business, 1920-2000: How it Worked, “More people in the U.S. workforce were getting their first job at McDonald’s than at any other employer, including the Army.” By the end of this 80 year period, McDonald’s employer turn over rate was just over 200 percent per year. It was a temporary job, primarily for students.

This factor has changed somewhat. I remember in an ethics class in seminary we had to watch a documentary titled Fast Food Women. The film about workers in Eastern Kentucky projected an angle that the viewer should feel sorry for the workers who were forced to toil at their jobs. Many of the women were working there to help out their families because jobs in the coal mines, which paid substantially more, and were worked by men, were not as readily as available as in the past. While the video portrayed somber music and footage, many of the women on camera said positive things about their jobs and the opportunity it afforded them.

New England Patriots’ punter Zoltan Mesko is undoubtedly upset that his team didn’t make it to the Super Bowl again this year, but it’s hardly the toughest ordeal of his life. As Romanian refugees, Mesko’s family endured Communist oppression, deprivation and violent revolution. Mesko, who holds an M.A. from the University of Michigan, shared his family’s experience and how faith plays a role in his life in an interview with the National Catholic Register.

Courtesy of the New England Patriots/David Silverman

When asked if he found it difficult to adapt to American culture, Mesko responded:

Not really. Romania was a very harsh place to live while the communists were in power. They portray it as equality for all, but the equality you get is everyone being equally miserable. Government control of everything results in less prosperity for everyone…My mother and father are both engineers, so we had quite a bit of money. However, because of hyperinflation, the money couldn’t buy much. We lived paycheck to paycheck in Romania, so the transition to American culture wasn’t too tough. I found things to be so much easier here.

The schools, too, exhibited and thereby taught the principle of reward in accordance with (intellectual) merit. To the intellectually meritorious went the praise, the teacher’s smiles, and the highest grades. In the currency the schools had to offer, the smartest constituted the upper class. Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards.

The wider market society, however, taught a different lesson. There the greatest rewards did not go to the verbally brightest. There the intellectual skills were not most highly valued. Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority “entitled” them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?

The entire essay is thoughtful and worth the read and it reminded me of some of my own observations of life at Ole Miss, my own Alma Mater. Much of what Nozick explains in the essay may be magnified at a school that has a similar cultural makeup as that one. The University of Mississippi or Ole Miss, at least from my own experience, is a very solid public university. There are some excellent professors in residence, especially within the college of liberal arts. For a public university, especially when it comes to capitalism and cultural norms, the student body is relatively conservative. I would say though from my own experience, however, it isn’t a place of grand academic probing or curiosity for most students. How many colleges genuinely can claim that characteristic today, though? That is not to say students are less intelligent or thoughtful than elsewhere.

A deep intellectual curiosity among the student body, in most cases, would not ingratiate you towards your peers and it certainly did you little favor in the social scene. I immediately noticed a tension between some of the academics and a large portion of the student body. Social development, popularity, networking, and the general social scene was all the rage for many students. Whether it was through popular fraternities and sororities and social gatherings, those activities and influences took precedence over the academy and academic pursuits.

A lot students came from financially successful families and many of those families were popular in Mississippi. They had little interest in repudiating their background, upbringing, and many of the cultural norms that surrounded them. While some academics on campus wanted the students to at least in part, to repudiate some of those values and norms. And many of those same students – who might be described as not “academic” or “intellectual” – were masters of the social scene, where often financial success comes in life, especially in the field of business and entrepreneurial enterprise. The resentment of some in academic circles was palpable. They felt betrayed by the wider culture – no beautiful woman at their side, no expensive sport utility vehicle, and little popularity. Thus there was a feeling that the system is rigged and unfair. I suspect in many of the the more traditional campus settings, feelings like this are especially common.

There has been a lot written on the topic of the academy’s rants and raging against the free market. Certainly much of it has to do with the deep perception that some professors aren’t rewarded to a greater degree than those that are less academic but maybe more socially astute in life and business.

Perhaps the best examples today are the professors in SEC schools who carry impressive academic degrees and credentials but are dwarfed in salary by football coaches with motorcades bigger than the state governor, and a support staff greater than entire academic departments on campus. They are a visible reminder of the popular jock who got the girl, while simultaneously, being the most admired figure on campus. Is capitalism or the free market really to blame though?

This past weekend in Chicago a luncheon was held for the kickoff of college football’s Big 10 Conference. Michigan State University quarterback, Kirk Cousins, was featured at the conference, giving an honorary talk on his journey through four years in college football, and the important lessons he took away from his experience.

Cousin’s stresses the opportunity given to him at MSU was one of privilege. Unlike most haughty star athletes, Kirk Cousins seem to understand what it truly means to be privileged in the world of sports, he says:

“It is in this place of privilege where danger lies. I have been taught that human nature is such that the place of privilege most often leads to a sense of entitlement.” He goes on to say, though, that “Privilege should never leave to entitlement. In fact, I have been taught to believe that privilege should lead to responsibility. “

After these impressive words spoken from the quarterback Kirk Cousins, he then goes on to quote from Scripture; a verse that the Acton Institute has heavily used in informing the position that businessmen, politicians, and educators in our world hold today. The passage comes from Luke 12:48, “Any person that has been given much will be responsible for much. Much more will be expected from the person that has been given more.”

This message, reiterated to us from a college football quarterback, should teach those of us who hold positions of leadership- that it is a privilege, and the privilege comes with a responsibility given to us by the grace of God. Those of us, who are given the great responsibility of leadership, have the freedom to choose what we will do with this great gift; but we should pray and hope we will choose what we ought to.

This year’s Super Bowl was widely hailed as an advance for black Americans because, for the first time, two black coaches faced off in the game. But, as Anthony Bradley observes, coaches Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith pointed to an even greater achievement: They did it “the Lord’s way.”